This invention relates to a new additive composition for the more efficient utilization of gasoline and to new liquid fuel compositions.
Modern constraints on energy consumption have made it more important than ever to obtain the greatest degree of efficiency in combustion of petroleum-derived fuels. Over the decades, tremendous efforts have gone into the search for gasoline and other fuel additives to serve a variety of purposes to make the combustion of fuel not only more efficient but also cleaner with respect to air pollution requirements. These research efforts have led investigators down certain paths with a consequent characterization of certain types of additives as having a particular function. For example, certain organic acid salts of the various heavy metals have been characterized as stabilizers for gasoline and similar fuels; see for example, Guthmann U.S. Pat. No. 2,197,498. Such compounds have also been known to serve as smoke depressant additives for diesel fuel mixtures and the like; see Badin U.S. Pat. No. 3,594,138. Other heavier metal compounds of very specialized organic molecules have been used as anti-knock compounds, as in Patinkin U.S. Pat. No. 3,529,943, as polymeric surface active materials, as in Balthis U.S. Pat. No. 2,681,922, as chelates to improve the combustion characteristics of relatively non-volatile hydrocarbon fuels, as in Irish et al U.S. Pat. No. 3,003,859, and as sediment stabilizers as in Fischl et al U.S. Pat. No. 3,056,666. Heavy organic acids have been utilized to form ester compositions used for gasoline to inhibit ice formation, as in Jolly U.S. Pat. No. 2,891,089. The foregoing listing is simply exemplary of a wide effort to cure or ameliorate, by use of additives, a variety of adverse properties of gasoline or other fuels. Because of the extensiveness of the effort, virtually every fuel-soluble organic and inorganic compound has been tested in gasoline for one purpose or another.
In spite of these efforts, it appears that up to now, the art has not appreciated that a very specific combination of gasoline soluble components has the ability to provide an overall improvement in the combustion characteristics of fuel, particularly gasoline. In this regard, I have discovered that a particular composition provides improved combustion, increasing horsepower and fuel efficiency, reducing exhaust emissions of carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons, and reducing detonation attributable to less than optimum octane fuel, incomplete mixing of fuel and air, or uneven distribution of the fuel/air mixture.
In particular, I provide a composition suitable for use as an additive to gasoline to increase the efficiency of use thereof, comprising, in solution: about 10 to about 35 percent by volume of a zirconium salt of an organic acid; about 10 to about 35 percent by volume of a plasticizer boiling above 300.degree. C. and comprising as a part of its structure an ester group or an aromatic group, or both; from 0 to about 6 percent by volume of an organic acid capable of forming a salt with zirconium; and a solvent for said zirconium salt and said plasticizer comprising a hydrocarbon or a halogenated aliphatic hydrocarbon, or a mixture thereof, as a major component of said solvent.